V-Day Archives - Emerging Women

We are proud to announce another exciting addition to the stellar line-up of Emerging Women Live 2014: Eve Ensler!

If you were at Emerging Women Live 2013 in Boulder, then you know how fortunate we are to have Eve joining us again in NYC. I don’t think I’m exaggerating when I say there wasn’t a dry eye in the audience by the time she finished her incredibly moving talk, “The Power of Voice.” EWLive veterans – am I wrong? She was powerful, graceful, vulnerable, courageous and DANCING her truth. We look forward to another breath-taking performance from Eve this year.

“An activist is someone who cannot help but fight for something. That person is not usually motivated by a need for power or money or fame, but in fact is driven slightly mad by some injustice, some cruelty, some unfairness, so much so that he or she is compelled by some internal moral engine to act to make it better.”

About Eve Ensler:

Eve Ensler, Tony Award-winning playwright, performer, and activist, is the author of The Vagina Monologues, which has been translated into over 48 languages, performed in over 140 countries, including sold-out runs at both Off-Broadway’s Westside Theater and on London’s West End (2002 Olivier Award nomination, Best Entertainment). Her experience performing The Vagina Monologues inspired her to create V-Day, a global activist movement to stop violence against women and girls which raises funds and awareness through benefit productions of her award-winning play The Vagina Monologues and other artistic works. In 2011, over 5,600 V-Day benefits took place. To date, the V-Day movement has raised over $100 million and educated millions. V-Day’s most recent global campaign, ONE BILLION RISING, galvanized over one billion women and men on a global day of action towards ending violence against women and girls in February 2013. Her latest book “In the Body of the World” (Metropolitan Books) — is a brave and beautiful examination of an illness, unlike anything ever written about cancer. She was named one of US News & World Report’s ”Best Leaders” in association with the Center for Public Leadership (CPL) at Harvard Kennedy School and one of “125 Women Who Changed Our World” by Good Housekeeping Magazine (2010). In 2011 she was named one of Newsweek’s “150 Women Who Changed the World” and The Guardian’s “100 Most Influential Women.”

a href=”http://www.eveensler.org/about-eve/” target=”_blank” rel=”noopener noreferrer”>Read more about Eve Ensler HERE>>>

About Emerging Women Live 2014:

Emerging Women Live aims to support and propel the emerging movement of women who are stepping up and changing the world. #EWLive14 is a one of a kind conference that helps women to harness the power of the feminine, rock the business world, and create a new paradigm for success.

Join us for an experience that will last far beyond the four days we spend together. Early Bird tickets are available HERE until July 1st. Learn more here>>>

I would like to introduce you to one of my heroes. The great thing about the hero archetype is that they are always trying to save the world. With Eve, we can say that literally. Earlier this year, she incited a global flash mob through her V-Day campaign – an effort put forth by her non-profit 1 Billion Rising to raise awareness and stop the violence against women around the globe – in which every country in the world participated. Every country. Every single country in the world was dancing and submitting videos calling out for an end to the horrors that many women face in the world today. Who else has had that kind of reach? I still can’t wrap my head around it, but that’s ok, because my heart gets it at such a profound level.

In her brilliance, Eve is using dance to communicate the undiminishable power of both body and spirit. Through the body, where our femininity has such wisdom and power, and through the dance, where we celebrate and connect to the web of humanity – we rise.

Eve Ensler is one of the most important supporters and activists of women’s rights of our time. Her art and activism has inspired thousands of women around the world, to open up and share their own stories. Eve is a Tony Award-winning playwright, performer, author and activist. Her signature play The Vagina Monologues, has been translated into over 48 languages, performed in over 140 countries, including sold-out runs at both Off-Broadway’s Westside Theater and on London’s West End (2002 Olivier Award nomination, Best Entertainment).

Her experience performing The Vagina Monologues inspired her to create V-Day, a global activist movement that aims to stop violence against women and girls. V-day raises funds and awareness through benefit productions of the award-winning play The Vagina Monologues and other artistic works. In 2011, over 5,600 V-Day benefits took place. The V-Day movement has raised over $90 million and educated millions. Eve’s latest book, In the Body of the World (Metropolitan Books) — the book is a brave and beautiful examination of an illness, unlike anything ever written about cancer.

Eve has written numerous articles for The Guardian, Huffington Post, Washington Post and the International Herald Tribune. She was named one of US News & World Report’s “Best Leaders” in association with the Center for Public Leadership (CPL) at Harvard Kennedy School and one of “125 Women Who Changed Our World” by Good Housekeeping Magazine (2010). In 2011 she was named one of Newsweek’s “150 Women Who Changed the World” and The Guardian’s “100 Most Influential Women.”

Eve Ensler mentioned in a recent interview in Origin Magazin:

“Freedom, that’s the kind of power I’m interested in. When we help each other get free, then it’s not about anybody being on top or anybody being on the bottom. It’s about being together, in a community. One of the many wonderful things about One Billion Rising was to see how everybody took this energy that was circulating around the planet and turned it into what they needed it to be. To me, that’s where freedom and energy come together.” ~ Eve Ensler

Eve Ensler was a keynote speaker at Emerging Women Live 2013, where she shared with us “In the Body of the World”.

She spoke about themes from her most recent memoir, a meditation on separation and connection—to the body, the self, and the world.

Eve has devoted her life to the female body—how to talk about it, how to protect and value it. Yet she spent much of her life disassociated from her own body—a disconnection brought on by her father’s sexual abuse and her mother’s remoteness.

“Because I did not, could not inhabit my body or the Earth,” she writes, “I could not feel or know their pain.” But Ensler is shocked out of her distance. While working in the Congo, she is shattered to encounter the horrific rape and violence inflicted on the women there. Soon after, she is diagnosed with uterine cancer, and through months of harrowing treatment, she is forced to become first and foremost a body—pricked, punctured, cut, scanned. It is then that all distance is erased. As she connects her own illness to the devastation of the earth, her life force to the resilience of humanity, she is finally, fully—and gratefully—joined to the body of the world.

In her talk and her work, Eve Enlser is unflinching, generous, and inspiring; she calls on us all to embody our connection to and responsibility for the world.

Enjoy this TEDTalk below where Eve Ensler talks about her lifelong disconnection from her body – and how two shocking events helped her to connect with the reality, the physicality of being human.

If you are dedicated to living a fully expressed life that thrives on authenticity, creativity, and the power of your unique self, Emerging Women Live is your tribe.